I had a classmate in junior high named Jeremy. He had a bit of a stutter.

I hadn’t thought about him in over 20 years, but I had a few friends that recently went to the Pearl Jam concert. And I love making fun of their song Jeremy. Of course, I never made fun of the Jeremy that stuttered. I felt bad for him and the few times he’d struggle to speak, I’d listen patiently.

I thought about him again recently when a letter appeared in a magazine I was reading. A guy with a stutter talked about how hard it was to approach women. I have to think when you’re nervous, the stutter is probably a lot worse.

And I wondered if it would be better for this guy to meet women online. After all, he’s not going to be typing something that says “It was nice m, m, m, mee…meeting you.”

(I’m guessing Pete is the only one that actually laughed at that last line).

I’d like to think at some point the guy would explain online, that he has a stutter. This would properly prepare the woman for it, and she’d probably smile and be polite. That would make him feel a lot more comfortable.

I’ve met people with disabilities that often joke about them, which makes people feel more comfortable.

But it seems to me a stutter is a bit different. I’m guessing the more the guy talks about it with a woman, or anyone, the worse it could be. He might just hope he can get by in casual conversation without many people noticing.

Randall McMurphy, played nicely by Jack Nicholson in the movie version of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, helped rid Billy Babbitt of his stutter by bringing a woman into the hospital. He got her drunk and they had a night together. Of course, you can always count on Nurse Ratchet to bring back the stutter.

The movie Sixth Sense had an interesting stuttering scene, involving a teacher that a problem in his childhood with stuttering.

I remember as a teenager making mix tapes. Sometimes you made them for women, and I cringe now at some of the songs I thought were romantic that I put on them.

For my guy friends, it would depend on what topics we had been discussing. If it was best guitar solos, the mix tape might be my top 20 choices.

If I had a stutter, I’d make a mix CD of the best stutter songs. The Who, with Roger Daltrey stuttering right before the course of My Generation. The Guess Who’s 70s incarnation of Bachman, Turner, Overdrive has the rockin’ You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.

I’m not sure if I’d consider Eddie Money’s “Shakin’” as a stuttering song. But I’d probably put it on, because it’s not like you have a lot of songs to choose from.